Ploughing Match

Whether the plough is pulled by four legs or four wheels, much skill is required by the ploughman to produce winning furrows!

This event clearly illustrates the combination of skills required by the ploughman: he must control and manage the pair of horses or the tractor plus the plough in order to produce winning furrows. Match conditions mean that a crowd of interested and knowledgeable people – mostly men in macs - are watching his every move! It is believed that this colour footage shows the annual competition held by the Cruckton and District Ploughing and Hedging Society, Shropshire.

Ion Trant of Dovea Farm, Tipperary, Ireland, studied agriculture in Canada and then took up a postion at the Welsh Plant Breeding Station, Aberystwyth, where he met his future wife, Janet Owen of Maesmawr Hall, Welshpool, both of them involved in grassland research. Ion created/filmed the "Country Close-Up" series for children (BBC-1956-62), using his own farms and children as raw material, and subsequently obtained work as a freelance cameraman. As John Kerry, he provided a farming column for the Montgomeryshire Express and his autobiography ‘Just Across the Water’, (pub. 1996 with the assistance of the S.E. Cattle Breeding Association, Dovea), contains a description of a Cruckton ploughing match.